Watching the audienceâ€™s reaction to LaXula on the free stage at the Barbican in May, ahead of the eveningâ€™s concert by winners at this yearâ€™s Awards for World Music, brought home what an arresting performer their leader is. Dressed like some kind of world music Goth, Monte whirled around the stage and had people asking, why wasnâ€™t LaXula the European winner? A winner? She wasnâ€™t even a contender, still being without a record label to put her album out. From a sales point of view, a record label isnâ€™t so necessary in this modern era of MySpace and downloads, when an artist can release her own album and do quite well. But the delegates at last yearâ€™s WOMEX trade fair, who make the nominations for the Awards, had never heard of LaXula, a group put together in London by the Spanish singer and songwriter Monte PalafoX.. In-Xile is included in this monthâ€™s package sent out by the compilers of the monthly world music charts to 52 radio DJâ€™s around Europe, so it will be interesting to see if they bite on this delicious apple of an album. Ojos de Brujo, look behind you â€“ hereâ€™s an artist who is hot on your tail.

Many of the artists featured in these shows are not widely known in their own countries, but two of this weekâ€™s singers are famous pop singers widely played on their regionâ€™s radio stations. Very popular in Bulgaria, Konstantin won the nationâ€™s annual contest for Best Folk Song in 2003 with â€˜Aide, Zemi Tamburateâ€™ in which he exhorts his percussionist to play that tambourine and celebrate our heroes and our beautiful women.

Nancy Ajram

The Lebanese singer Nancy Ajram is recommended by Nasim Masoud at Songlines Magazine as one of the Middle Eastâ€™s most ubiquitous voices.

Suspects is a South African hip hop group, included in one of two albums called Mood Africa, drawn from the many releases on the Melt label over the past ten years or so.

Enrico Macias

Iâ€™m not sure if the fifth volume in the series Oriental Garden is better than its predecessors, or if itâ€™s just luck that I gave it more attention. In any case, I like several things on it, including â€˜La Vie Populaireâ€™ by Enrico Macias. Iâ€™d never heard of him before, but the sleeve note informs us that heâ€™s a famous singer songwriter in Turkey and Egypt who has been commissioned to write songs for the United Nations.

Shweta Jhaveri

The album Anahita by Shweta Jhaveri has been sitting on my shelf since it was sent in 1998. I ran across it while looking for something else in the India section of my CD library, took it down to wonder why I have kept it, and noticed that among the musicians is the violinists Jenny Scheinman, who more recently played so beautifully on the albums of Marta Topferova. Equally intriguing, production is by Lee Townsend, responsible for supervising the impeccable sound on many Bill Frisell albums. Following the principle, better to listen late than never, the reward is to discover the spellbinding â€˜To a Belovedâ€™.

Last edited by Charlie on Sat Jul 07, 2007 6:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Charlie, could you confirm the Lebanese singer's name? Should it be Nancy Ajram, with a 'j'? If so, this would be the singer that Natacha Atlas cites as an influence on her last album Mish Maoul. You can certainly hear it in that track.

I reckon it must be Nancy Ajram Con. I know about her through the wedding I DJed at the other week (the one I wrote about here on the "Still Going Deaf in Smokey Clubs" strand). A few days before the wedding, the bride gave me a number of CDs with music she'd burned for me to play on the night, including a lot of stuff she'd picked up on a recent trip to Lebanon, a couple of Nancy Ajram tunes amongst them. She told me that Nancy had come to the public's attention via a TV talent show & was a huge star, akin to Kylie or Madonna.

Her tunes went down well at the wedding & have proved a big hit with Darbucka's Middle Eastern regulars.